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kkleiner writes "It has been known for some time that, during pregnancy, fetal cells end up circulating within the mother’s bloodstream. A relatively new discovery, however, is that these fetal cells don’t just remain in the blood stream they travel to organs such as the heart or brain and stay there. What’s fascinating about these fetal cells is that they resemble pluripotent stem cells – they have the ability to become heart or brain cells. What this means functionally is still uncertain. But the potential for these so-called fetal microchimeric cells to incorporate and actually help repair maternal tissue is a new and exciting area of medical research."Link to Original Source